


tear me to pieces, skin to bone

by green_tea_mochi



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Akira is only mentioned, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Asuka Ryo-centric, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crybaby-verse, Denial of Feelings, Implied time loop, Insomnia, Introspection, M/M, Not A Fix-It, One Shot, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Pre Episode 6, Ryo Asuka is bad at feelings, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Loop, but blink and you miss it, ryo is a disaster gay, ryo is stuffy so the writing style is stuffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27019207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_tea_mochi/pseuds/green_tea_mochi
Summary: It’s times like this when Ryo wonders if he’s ever felt anything but apathy.
Relationships: Asuka Ryo | Satan & Fudo Akira, Asuka Ryo | Satan/Fudo Akira
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	tear me to pieces, skin to bone

**Author's Note:**

> A short character study I couldn't get out of my head. Title taken from "Lovely", by Billie Eilish.

The white of the walls is familiar. When Ryo wakes at night from some half-remembered dream ( _nightmare,_ ) and paces the length of the room, the white surrounds him like a second skin. It’s almost comforting, would be if not for the strange sense that he’s seen the white before, a hundred more times out of reach. In his sleep he’s seen them blown to rubble and streaked with ugly yellow blood. But tonight they’re plain, shadowed, and Ryo can’t help but hate them. Hates how monochrome the room is, the flimsy cotton of his oversized t-shirt the same, empty white as everything else. The only shock of color are the city lights he can see blinking through the windows of the high-rise in the distance. 

It’s 3am and Ryo paces against the window. The twilight in the open sitting room of the penthouse casts deep swathes of shadow over the couch, the overhead lights turned off hours ago by Jenny before she left and slipped off into the nightlife of the city. He doesn’t bother turning them back on. It’s 3am but the sounds of Tokyo drift up from the streets below, the faint noise of car horns and the rumble of engines the only sound beside the tap-tap of Ryo’s bare feet on the floor. Familiar. 

It’s times like this when Ryo wonders if he’s ever felt anything but apathy. He remembers the horror of Professor Fikara, the smell of gasoline on flesh and the grotesque, inhumane writhing of the thing as it burned. And yet… There’s something missing, something he can’t quite grab ahold of. The thought slips away like sand though his fingers. There was terror in the moment (for it couldn’t have been anything but terror), but it faded too quickly, burned too bright. It felt almost artificial, pre-conceived. Professor Fikara had always seemed an abstract. He existed in a separate realm from Ryo, and his death was just that. Expected, impersonal. It was the natural progression of things, and somehow Ryo knew that it would have happened regardless of what he might have done. Perhaps that was the cause of the dissonance between them, the cold, calm resignation as he watched the Professor’s descent into madness. He cleaned up bird carcasses on the floor of their shared hut and felt nothing. 

Like most of the world, the Professor had subsisted apart from Ryo. Even while he was alive (if you could call it that), as they spent long evenings on the forest floor mulling over the Professor's rambling, unintelligible papers, Ryo was detached. He knew that no matter what he said to the Professor, the critiques he gave, the precautions he took to keep the study room of the hut dark and quiet, it wouldn’t matter in the end, wouldn’t change the fact that that night would end with the sharp smell of gasoline and the plume of red, brightly burning fire. 

It seemed as if they all resided in the conceptual, and only that. Not like Akira, who Ryo knew he could touch, knew he could call even at three in the morning and it would amount to something. Akira would answer all in a huff at being woken and it would be new. Something different, though it shouldn’t have been. 

As much as they were separate, Akira was a constant in the bubble Ryo lived in. If the rest of the world was below him, than Akira was the exception. 

Ryo turned sharply on his heel and collapsed onto the couch _(white, white, always white)_ , pulling his knees up into his chest. The laptop sat abandoned on the opposite end of the coffee table, but Ryo left it, steepled his hands together and rested his forehead against them. A piece of hair tickled his eyes and he blew it away sharply, stifling the urge to shear it off. He couldn’t pay for distractions. Even something as seemingly small and inconsequential as the length of his hair could impact his objective, could pull him off track. Strange then, that he let Akira continue to run unchecked.

He tried, of course, to discipline him, to keep a tight leash on Akira’s newfound abilities. Months of careful planning would not go to waste because of his own carelessness. And yet...Ryo found Akira, as usual, to be the exception. When Akira brought back armfuls of bagged fast food, greasy and cheap and distracting, Ryo let him. Let him shove chips and sandwiches down his throat even if everything tasted like dust. When Akira hung over the back of the couch while Ryo worked, toying with his hair and complaining loudly in his ear, Ryo let him. Let him haul Ryo over his shoulder and toss him in the pool, even if it took hours for his clothes to dry. 

Ryo couldn’t say why. He knew he was the essential piece of the operation, around which every other variable orbited. He knew that he was the one wielding Akira, nudging him towards their shared end, despite the lingering feeling that somewhere in his careful planning there was a mistake. Some glaring, obvious flaw that Ryo _knew_ was coming and yet couldn’t stop. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to take such a risk. 

He should have been above Akira, regardless of whatever their shared childhood might have meant, or the way Akira would sling an arm around his shoulder when they walked together and something ugly and bright would unfurl in the pit of Ryo’s stomach. 

Perhaps that was why he pushed Akira away, why he confronted each of their nightly outings with a cool detachedness. Ryo knew he was distanced from everyday life, from simple conversations and day-to-day pleasures. He existed for their objective and nothing more; nothing less. Akira pulled at him, though, tugged him down to his level like Ryo wasn’t who he was, wasn’t capable of what they both knew he was. It wasn't fair, and Ryo felt something resentful building in his chest the longer he let this continue. He considered it for a moment in the quiet of the penthouse, the lights of the city reflecting across the floor. 

But it wouldn’t change anything in the end. 

Somehow Ryo knew he would still wake up tomorrow and go through the motions of work, in spite of whatever happened tonight. He could off himself in the bathroom with the razor taped beneath the sink and would still wake up to that white, empty room. 

For Ryo, the days circled back again and again, in a dizzying, fast-paced loop. Logically, this was impossible; time progressed normally and Ryo was conscious enough to know that his actions, his decisions, would have consequences on the world, on Akira. This didn’t change the fact that in the back of his mind he knew what these consequences were; each and every one of them, as clearly as if he had lived them before. 

There was no clock in the sitting room, but the walls were slowly brightening as the hours bled from night into early morning. Ryo sat on the couch, his legs going numb from where they were curled beneath him, and felt strangely empty. 

It was difficult to put into words, and some part of Ryo avoided even thinking about the hazy doubts, the inconsistencies. It was only in the surreal twilight of the room, when the white suffocated him, that he allowed himself to be honest. 

Akira was light and simple, and everything Ryo could not have. As much as he could quietly pine for the _realness_ of him _,_ it could not change hard facts. Ryo had a higher purpose and did not have time to spend on the simplicity of what Akira rambled about: the softness of Miki’s hair, the hours he spent after school running laps on the track, the family dinners of bento boxes and sugoi. There was a disconnect. Ryo was, and had always been, isolated, and intended to stay that way. He could not sacrifice everything he had worked for for the sake of something so obscure, so out of reach. 

Akira was all gangly limbs and emotions that exploded out of him, and Ryo knew he couldn’t have it. Knew that once the morning came and the work pulled him out of his suffocation that the feeling would pass. The strange, horribly familiar longing would dissipate and he could shove it back down into the ever-growing sense of wrongness he kept locked tightly away. Ignore the gaps in his memory that he somehow knew were right. It would be worth it in the end ( _it had to be_ ). 

He could return to what he knew, this false peace. He could fall back into their shared routine until this was finished. He didn’t plan for after because after wouldn’t come. 

The sun rose as it always did above the skyline of the city. Ryo set himself into the day and knew it would change nothing. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ryo is my trash disaster gay and I would dropkick him into the sun for one (1) corn chip. This piece may or may not have been written and edited spur of the moment at 10pm, so do with that what you will.


End file.
